1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed and claimed herein generally pertains to a method and system for notifying a telephone user that the quality of his or her speech or other audio information, as received at another telephone, is not acceptable. More particularly, the invention pertains to a method of the above type wherein a telephone speaker is notified of his or her deficient audio quality, while a phone call or conference is still in progress.
2. Description of the Related Art
During a telephone call, and particularly during conference calls, the audio or line quality of a listening participant may not be acceptable, and may in fact be disruptive to the call. Moreover, if the party that is speaking is using a hands-free device such as a speaker phone, the audio input to that device will be muted, in order to avoid feedback. This will prevent other participants on the call from verbally informing the speaker that a problem exists with his or her audio quality. In this situation, the person speaking may continue for a long period of time without knowing that an audio problem exists, while the party or parties listening have no means of notifying the speaker of the problem.
At present, solutions to the above problem do not appear to be available. Some phones indicate signal quality by using graphic displays such as a series of “signal bars”, where the bars depict signal strength between the phone and an associated active tower. However, the state of these signal bars frequently is not indicative of the actual audio quality. At present, the method used most commonly to correct audio degradation is simply for participants to wait until the speaker pauses long enough for another participant to verbally inform the speaker of the problem. Even this method may not succeed, if the person speaking is having inbound as well as outbound audio problems.
It is thus apparent that there is definite need for a mechanism to inform a speaking party on a telephone call that an audio problem exists, so that alternative communication and/or conferencing measures may be undertaken.